Late
by Dragonheart77
Summary: Elphaba finally deems it safe to come back to Oz, but she finds herself a surprise in Glinda's house... (Very sad, but does have a happy ending, kind of. Canon-verse one-shot. Not sure whether to categorize as hurt/comfort or angst.)


**A one-shot that I had to write. {You're going to make all the Wicked people hate you before you even start a proper fic.} I know. I know. Very, very sad, but it does have a happy ending... of sorts. Anywho. This is set at least several years after Wicked; I'm not sure exactly when. Long enough for several things to happen, that's for sure. This may or may not be canon to any other fics I write in the Wicked-verse, but it is canon-verse for now.**

 **Word count: 3,183**

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Fabala jumped at a faint thump on the balcony outside. Ordinarily, she would have been fast asleep at this hour, but sleeping had become difficult of late. And so her ears caught the slight sound that she would have slept right through a few weeks ago, the thump of something on the balcony, and then the faint creak of the hinge that had been neglected on the ornate glass doors opening. She turned, unafraid of being spotted behind the enormous back of the chair – excessive, as had been her mother's way – and cautiously peeked her head over the edge of the cushion.

A dark figure stood in the doorway, the faint moonlight from outside silvering the edge of their frame. The cloak wrapped around them made it impossible to tell their gender, but what they clutched in their hand made Fabala suck in a breath.

Though it was nearly silent, she could immediately tell that she had been heard. "Glinda?" the figure whispered, the nearly inaudible sound hopeful but wary.

In answer, Fabala reached over and turned on the lamp beside her.

The woman – she could see now it was a woman – lurched back as if by instinct, and Fabala gasped out a breath. "Elphaba," she breathed, the trademark emerald skin visible now.

The name made the woman stop and stare at her distrustfully. "I'm sorry, have we met?" she asked warily, still in a whisper.

Fabala shook her head. "No. But I'd know you anywhere."

Elphaba didn't seem to know what to make of that. "Where's Lady Glinda? She still lives here, doesn't she?" She shifted her broom in her hands.

"I... Are you looking for her? She told me you were dead." The evasion was clumsy, but it did its job.

Elphaba's face fell. "I know," she whispered. "But I'm not. I finally thought it might be safe to come back, just for a little while... just to tell her I'm alive."

Fabala felt her heart clench. She stared at Elphaba, pity and sorrow holding her tongue.

Elphaba saw the expression and her feet carried her forward a step. "Please, I'm not here to hurt her. Where is she?" she asked, increasingly desperate.

It took the girl a few seconds to reply. "I'm sorry," she whispered hoarsely.

The Witch stared at her for a long, long moment before shaking her head. "No, it can't... she can't... she can't be... no, she was too young! Where is she? Tell me! Where is Glinda?" She moved forward faster than Fabala thought she had any right to at her age, green fingers wrapping around the girl's shoulders and shaking her a little, voice rising in fear.

"Please, keep your voice down," Fabala hissed. "You'll wake someone up, and then you'll really be done for." She raised her hands to grab the woman's wrists, an instinctive protest to the crushing grip. Elphaba seemed to realize what she was doing and let her go. Fabala met her dark brown eyes, sharp with fear and dread, and whispered, "Lady Glinda passed less than a week ago. I'm sorry. You're too late."

Elphaba's knees seemed to give out, and she stumbled, grabbing the back of the chair Fabala was sitting in for support. "No," she whispered. "No, no... she was so young," she whispered. "How..."

Fabala got up and took her by the elbow, sitting the green woman down in the chair opposite her own. Elphaba offered no resistance, stilled in her shock at the news, sinking into the chair and staring off to nowhere. Fabala sat down again. "A few months ago, Glinda fell ill. No one could seem to do anything to identify the disease, much less stop its progress – only slow it. She grew weaker, though she kept doing her job, doing Good, until she physically couldn't get out of bed anymore. Even then, even in her last few weeks, she listened to people and tried to help them the best she could. It was only in the last week of her life that she couldn't do it anymore, and she stopped accepting visitors outside her own family doctor – she refused to have any other doctors try to extend her life, saying that there was nothing more they could do. She let him try to make her as comfortable as possible without putting her in a drugged stupor, but that was all. And me. She let her daughter in."

This sent Elphaba reeling again. "How... who..?"

"I'm sorry," Fabala apologized. "I should have – adoptive daughter. She never did marry. But she took me in when I was just a baby. She named me after you, you know... Fabala. It's a common nickname for Elphaba, although one you never used. But it was subtle enough that no one, including me, figured out that I was named for the Witch." She dropped her eyes to her hands again after a moment of silence before continuing her narrative.

"On her deathbed, Mother called me in, sent everyone else out of the room, out of the house, so that there was no way we could be overheard. She said there was something she needed to tell me, something she should have told me long ago. She told me about you, the not-so-Wicked Witch of the West, her Elphaba Thropp. She told me everything she could remember about the two of you... about you." Fabala pulled a string of glass beads out of her shirt front, staring at them as she remembered. "As she spoke, she held each one of these beads in her hand, spelling them to record what she said, so that I could never forget any of it. So someone would remember you for who you really were. I'm the only one that can access them; to anyone else, they're just a trinket. And she recorded in the last one how to transfer the spell to my daughter, when the time came.

"She knew she was dying, but she wouldn't let me call the doctor back in. She said... she said, 'It's all right, Fabala... I'll see them all again, I hope. Nessa, and Dillamond, and all of them... I know now that Yero was never mine to keep, but I hope I'll see him again too. And Elphie...'" Fabala swallowed hard, trying to keep her voice from shaking. "'I'll see my Elphie again.'" She blinked away tears. "She wanted nothing more than that. To be with you again. It nearly killed her when you died, or so I'm told... she came very, very close to the edge, though no one really understood why, of course. I think that's why she adopted me – so that she would have something to hold onto, someone to stay for."

Elphaba's face shone with tears, but she didn't make a sound. "I should have been there," she whispered, almost to herself. "I should have... I never told her I was..." She brushed the wetness away, almost angrily. "I never believed in an afterlife. I missed my last chance. Less than a week... less than a week too late." She looked away, staring at the cold chimney.

"I can show you..." Fabala swallowed hard. "Show you where she was buried. But you won't be able to stay long. Dawn will come eventually, and the grave of Glinda the Good is visited constantly."

Elphaba shook her head, thinking she would not be able to bear it, but found herself nodding after a second or two instead. Fabala stood and made for the stairs, but Elphaba held her back. "No. We'll wake someone."

"How else..." Fabala trailed off, staring at the broom in Elphaba's hand. "No. No way."

In answer, Elphaba strode out onto the balcony again, mounted the broom, and pulled Fabala on behind her, barely waiting for her to be settled before kicking off of the stone surface. Fabala's shriek was muffled by the cloak that swept up into her face for a second before being pulled tighter around the Witch. "Where?" Elphaba asked.

Fabala was still trying to adjust to the fact that they were floating in mid-air, hovering over the mansion that had passed from Glinda the Good on to her adoptive daughter. The view was incredible, but Fabala wasn't enjoying it, clinging shamelessly to her late mother's closest friend, heart in her throat.

Elphaba shifted slightly, and Fabala shrieked softly again, feeling her balance teeter for a split second. "Fabala! Where is it?"

Fabala peeked her head out and tentatively scanned the ground far below. She pointed, not trusting her voice, and Elphaba directed the broom toward the spot. Fabala buried her face in the Witch's back, unable to stand it any longer, trying to pretend they weren't flying practically unsupported a hundred feet above the ground. Elphaba didn't seem to notice or care, bent on a single purpose. A few seconds later, Fabala felt her feet hit the ground and she stumbled away from the broom weakly.

Elphaba paid her no mind, cloak sweeping behind her as she hurried to the arch of pink blooms that marked the place. She let out a small sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob at the sight of the flowers. Though they were closed for the night, they were very familiar to her – Glinda's favorites. She stopped abruptly under the arch, fingers brushing the petals of one of the blossoms, before turning her attention to the end of the walkway underneath the small tunnel of growth, wrapped in circular walls of flowers, but open to the sky. A slab of white marble gleamed in what little moonlight there was, and as Elphaba approached slowly, tentatively, the words engraved there, inlaid with gold, were clear.

HERE LIES

GLINDA THE GOOD

GOOD WITCH OF THE SOUTH

BELOVED RULER OF OZ

There was probably more, but it was blotted out by tears.

She had been scared out of her mind that Glinda would hate her for what she had done, that she would be angry, that maybe she would even refuse to speak to Elphaba. She had been scared that Glinda would send her away. She had even worried that perhaps Glinda had moved residence.

Never once had she considered that Glinda might not be there at all. That she might be dead.

Elphaba realized that she had fallen to her knees, but she didn't care. She reached out and brushed her fingers against the gravestone, tears running down her cheeks. "What am I going to do now, Glin?" she sobbed, pressing her forehead against the cold marble and wishing it was her closest friend.

She had no idea how long she sat there, until she had cried herself out. It could have been a minute or it could have been a month. It made no difference to Elphaba. The entire population of Oz could have come and gone and she would not have noticed or cared. But when she did finally open her eyes again, she saw through a slight blur Fabala sitting a few feet away, watching silently, the beads that had been around her neck in her hand. The girl reminded Elphaba of her adoptive mother in some ways – the golden curls, the brightness in her eyes, dulled as it was by grief, the way she tossed her hair over her shoulders when it got in her way; they were all Glinda. She whispered something to the glass in her hand and offered the string of beads to Elphaba. "They'll show you now, if you want."

Elphaba took the necklace hesitantly and glanced at Fabala before rolling the first bead by instinct between her fingers. Immediately she was thrown into a different time and place.

The room around her was dark, the curtains drawn, but a girl she recognized as Fabala was pulling the blinds back to let some light into the room. The woman on the bed shifted, and Elphaba's previously cracked heart crumbled at the sight of her. The golden hair that had once held such beautiful bounce and curl was darkened with sweat, lying limp across the pillow. Glinda's face bore lines Elphaba didn't remember her having, but it was more the alternately pallid and flushed tone of her skin that made the Witch's heart clench. She was shivering, and winced at the light, but when Fabala immediately started to close the blinds again, she protested in a trembling voice, "No. No, leave them open." The voice that had been so strong and confident when Elphaba knew her was shaking, weak, translucent.

"Oh, Glin," she whispered, but her words made no sound in the memory.

Fabala came to sit by the bed, taking Glinda's hand. "Mum, it will only make your headache worse."

"I don't want to die in darkness," she said hoarsely, shaking her head slightly. Her eyes were still that familiar brilliant blue, but clouded with pain. "Fabala, I need to tell you something... something I should have told you a long time ago. I promised not to, but someone has to know... someone has to remember the truth."

Fabala shook her head. "Mum, what are you talking about? The truth about what?"

Glinda let out a wheezing laugh. "Not what... who. The Witch of the West."

Fabala frowned. "What about her?"

"Her real name is... _was_ Elphaba Thropp, Thropp Second Descending and second heiress to the title of Eminent Thropp, though she never did claim the title. I refuse to call her Wicked anymore. She was far from Wicked. And she was my closest friend."

Elphaba listened, her fingers moving down the beads so that the stream of memories never stopped for more than a second, even as she started crying again. She listened to the failing Glinda recount every tiny detail she could remember from their days together, from the exact shade Elphaba's skin turned in a certain lighting, to how much she had loathed herself for it, to the pair's reactions to their being put in a room together, to the specific words the two had shouted and snapped and snipped and sneered back and forth in the following days, to Elphaba's constant profound nature that continued to perplex Galinda, to how infuriating Elphaba was at times, but most of all, Glinda emphasized just how much she had loved Elphaba. Glinda spoke of things Elphaba had forgotten entirely, but which she remembered once her memory was jogged, and of things that the Witch had had no idea she'd paid such attention to. Elphaba silently filled in little bits and pieces that Glinda had apparently forgotten about, marveling at the other woman's view on her and how it compared to the view from the other side of the glass, as it were. She was surprised just how much detail and care Glinda put into her account. She truly had not wanted Elphaba, the real Elphaba, to be forgotten.

By the end of her story, both Witches were crying, though separated by time and space and now by several feet of earth and a few inches of Quox wood. Glinda sniffled and Fabala reached out to wipe away her tears, her own eyes stinging. "Oh, Glin," Elphaba whispered again, reaching out as if to touch her, but of course she could not. It was only a memory.

Glinda laid back on the bed after telling Fabala – and Elphaba – how to transfer the spell on the beads and let out a shuddering, wheezing breath, as if it might be her last. The Fabala in the memory heard the finality of it too and reached out to touch Glinda's cheek with shaking fingers. "Mum, no, don't go," she pleaded.

"It's all right," Glinda promised in a whisper, smiling as brightly as she could muster. "It's all right, Fabala... I'll see them all again, I hope. Nessa, and Dillamond, and all of them... I know now that Yero was never mine to keep, but I hope I'll see him again too. And Elphie..." Glinda wheezed a breath in, her lungs failing her. "I'll see my Elphie again." She smiled, a real smile, as brilliant as ever, at the thought, and her eyes turned away from Fabala. Though she knew it was only a memory and there was no way Glinda could possibly see her, it almost looked like Glinda had focused on Elphaba instead. "Elphaba..." she sighed, the last of the air in her lungs leaving her lips with that word. She did not inhale again. From her slackened fingers on the bed, a glitter of glass rolled onto the blanket, and the memory ended as the bead fell from her fingers.

Elphaba stared down at the necklace of memories, all that was left of her only friend, and after a moment whispered the words that would give it back to Fabala. The girl took them back from her and looped them around her neck again. Elphaba brushed her emerald fingers over the gravestone once more before standing and leaving. Fabala came to her feet and made her way to the first arch of flowers to find Elphaba standing there with a small book, opening it up and sliding her slender fingers with all the delicate care they could muster under the thing inside. She lifted the faded bloom, the pink petals but a shadow of the brilliant hue they had once carried, and smiled faintly at it. The flower Glinda had given her the night after the dance, Fabala realized. _The_ dance. The one that had changed their lives. Elphaba must have pressed it and kept it, all these years. She looked down at the glass beads around her neck, still in awe of the legacy they carried, a relationship that had been a very long friendship.

When she looked up again, all that was left of Elphaba was the shadow outlined in stars as she flew away.

* * *

Almost another twenty years later, a figure wrapped in a black cloak was found sitting with her back against the gravestone of Glinda the Good. She did not respond to anything that was said, and when the hood was hesitantly pulled back from her face after determining that she was beyond mortal reach, the people fell back with a gasp of fear at the sight of green. Their old nemesis, it seemed, had not been as dead as they had believed.

But it didn't matter anymore. She was most certainly dead now, stiff and cold after a night sitting against the gravestone of her oldest enemy – her oldest friend, thought one, but she said nothing. Her crinkled, veined green skin carried no trace of life. She was buried in an unmarked grave. Unmarked, that is, but for the single pink bloom that was planted there the following day, when no one was looking, by hands that had touched that green once and lived, though she never did tell the tale.

 _Wicked woman. You took your time._

 _I know. I'm sorry._

 _I expected you to be waiting for me when I first left, but no._

 _But I'm here now._

 _Yes. Now and forever._

 _Two good friends._

 _Two best friends._

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 **So many references in that last exchange... one of which to a book I've never read!**

 **Reviews, please! Thanks for reading, and I'll see y'all next time!**


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